


The Kraken of the Lake

by baroque_mongoose



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 18:56:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3300146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroque_mongoose/pseuds/baroque_mongoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you get across a lake patrolled by an enormous, swift-moving mechanical kraken with no need to eat or sleep?  Violetta asks Mr Wooster about his most challenging assignment, and discovers the answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kraken of the Lake

“So what was the most challenging assignment you ever had to tackle?” asked Violetta, curiously. “That is, the most challenging one you can tell me about, of course.”

“Physically or mentally?” I asked, sipping my tea.

“Mentally,” she replied, promptly. “I like hearing about your ingenious problem-solving techniques.”

“Ah,” I said. “Well, that, I think, would be one I had while I was in Italy. I was supposedly on holiday, but unfortunately I happened to be the nearest agent to hand, and... well, I had better tell you from the beginning, I suppose.”

“Go on,” she prompted.

“Well, it was like this,” I explained. “There was a prototype device being tested in secret near where I was staying at the time. Naturally I didn't know about it until things went wrong, or I might have chosen somewhere else to go on holiday. I can't tell you anything about the nature of the device for obvious security reasons, but what I can say was that it was stolen, and so, of course, being in the area, I got a call to go and recover it.”

“Nice for you,” said Violetta. “Did they at least know who had stolen it?”

“Oh, yes. The identity of the thief wasn't a problem. They knew very well it was Egidio Pugnoferro, who was the most powerful spark in the vicinity. Recovering stolen property from a spark, however, is always problematic, and in this particular case it was especially difficult.”

“Why?” asked Violetta.

“Pugnoferro was unsociable and paranoid in the extreme,” I replied, “and so he lived on an island in the middle of a lake, accessible only by boat. To guard the island, he had built an enormous mechanical kraken which constantly patrolled the lake. It would detect any boat or swimmer in the water, and immediately attack; and it could move very fast under water. Now, if the kraken had been biological, it would have been much easier to deal with. I could perhaps have waited for it to sleep, or fed it drugged meat, or something of that sort. But, no. It was a clank. Pugnoferro knew what he was doing.”

Violetta raised an eyebrow. “And I suppose your authorities knew all about that?”

“Of course they did,” I said. “So they issued me with a crossbow.”

“With a _what_?” said Violetta.

“No, think about it,” I reminded her. “They were expecting me to have to make the crossing by boat. They wanted to give me a weapon that could pack an enormous punch with very little recoil. Any gun capable of troubling the kraken would probably have thrown me backwards out of the boat.”

“Yeah, I suppose that does make sense,” she conceded. “It's just that when you're up against cutting-edge technology, something like a crossbow isn't the first thing I'd normally think of. But you're right.”

“Well,” I continued, “a crossbow was certainly likely to be a better weapon than a gun in the circumstances, and I know I'm an accurate shot. Nonetheless, I still didn't rate my chances of getting over in a boat. The problem with a crossbow is that it takes a while to reload. That thing could move fast, as I said. If I didn't take it out completely with my first shot, I was not going to get a second; and I doubted that even a powerful crossbow could stop it with a single shot. I was going to have to look at other alternatives.”

“A blimp?” asked Violetta.

“I didn't have one,” I replied, “and even if I had, it would have been too easy to spot. Pugnoferro would have shot me down straight away. So I went into the boatyard to think. It was abandoned, as you might expect; nobody went boating on the lake now that the kraken was there. But there were plenty of materials lying around which, with a little thought, I might be able to use. Obviously there was a vast amount of rope; there were also various pieces of wood, strips of sailcloth, balls of twine, tins of caulk, spars, hooks, oars, and all the other things you might expect.”

“Oh, I know!” Violetta exclaimed. “You built a decoy!”

“I thought about that,” I said. “The trouble was, it wouldn't have worked for long enough to allow me to cross the lake. I also thought about using an upturned boat as a kind of diving bell so that I could crawl along the bottom of the lake, since the kraken was primarily monitoring the surface. However, for one thing I didn't know how deep the lake was or what the conditions were like at the bottom, and for another thing I wasn't sure the boat would be heavy enough to stay on the bottom when it was full of air.”

“So what did you do in the end?” asked Violetta.

“As a matter of fact,” I replied, “I used the crossbow.”

She gave me an odd look. “To do what?”

I grinned. “I took the largest ball of twine I could find, unrolled the whole thing, folded it up loosely, and tied one end to the crossbow bolt. Fortunately for me, there were several trees on the island. I shot the crossbow bolt across the lowest branch of one of these trees in such a way that it ended up on the same shore I was standing on, but some way around the lake. If you like, I shot across a corner of the island. I then fastened the twine and walked round to retrieve the bolt. When I returned to the original spot, I then had a double length of twine going from the shore to the tree on the island, wrapped securely around the trunk, and prevented from sliding down the tree by its lowest branch.”

“About how far away was the tree?” she asked.

“About fifty metres, give or take,” I replied.

“All right, that was some pretty accurate shooting,” she observed.

“Well, yes and no,” I replied. “All I really had to do was make sure I cleared the branch, and there was quite a big gap between that and the next one going out at a similar angle. And it was early spring, so there weren't enough leaves yet to hide the branches. I may have ancestors from Lucknow, but that doesn't mean I necessarily want to go on holiday to Italy during the height of summer.”

“That does make a difference,” said Violetta. “I was picturing you shooting through a tree in full leaf.”

“Oh, no. That would have been too much of a challenge at that distance,” I replied. “Anyway, so I had my twine in place. The next thing to do was to tie one end of the twine to a coil of rope and haul that out across the lake. I used the thinnest rope I could get away with, obviously; rope is inclined to be heavy, and I didn't want the twine breaking and the rope landing in the water. Even as it was, it took quite a lot of strength to prevent the rope from sagging far enough in the middle to break the surface. I had to keep plenty of tension on both ends at all times.”

“And then what?” asked Violetta. “I mean, fifty metres, you couldn't go hand over hand. No matter how strong you are, you'd have been in screaming agony before you got halfway.”

“I knew that,” I replied. “Once I'd got the rope into position, I climbed a tree on the shore and fastened it as tightly as I could around the trunk above the lowest branch, so the whole rope was well off the ground. Then I went back to the boatyard and made a simple sling seat out of sailcloth and rope. I used a large boat hook to hang it on the doubled length of rope, and I also took the precaution of fastening the hook to my wrist using a long length of twine.”

“How would that have helped?” asked Violetta. “If you'd fallen in, you could hardly have used that to pull yourself up.”

“The physics of real-life problems,” I explained. “School textbooks on Newtonian mechanics are invariably full of light, inextensible strings, whereas in real life there is no such thing. Any rope stretched between two points perpendicular to the gravitational force will tend to drop a little under its own weight, and if you then apply an extra load, it will stretch. I knew what was going to happen when I sat in the sling. It would slide downwards, and incidentally forwards, under gravity until it reached the midpoint of the journey, after which point it would start to decelerate because gravity would now be dragging it back. If the coefficient of friction between the hook and the rope was fairly low, I'd get quite a way past the midpoint before I came to a halt. From there on, though, I'd have to use my hands to haul myself up a gradient; and once I got to the other side, I was going to need a way to get back. So the length of twine was there to fasten the sling to the tree on the other side and prevent it from sliding back out to the midpoint before I was ready.”

“Was it high enough?” asked Violetta. “I mean, I could see you ending up in the lake at the midpoint.”

“It was a very close thing,” I admitted. “I did have to draw up my legs rather sharply. But, yes, it was high enough... just.”

“All right,” said Violetta. “So you got across the lake using your ingenious sling arrangement. What did you have to deal with on the other side? Massive guard dog constructs? A high wall with poisoned spikes on top? Flame-throwing clanks?”

“Actually, not very much,” I admitted. “Pugnoferro was so confident in his kraken that he didn't have very many other defences. To cut a long story short, I found a way into the house, retrieved the device, and returned the way I had come. I then unhooked the sling, re-attached the twine to the end of the rope, and hauled the rope back. After that, pulling back the twine was simple enough; it was light enough not to disturb the water when it fell, or to cause any trouble when it was wet. Obviously I couldn't have directly hauled back a wet rope, or I'd probably have found myself doing some unscheduled kraken-fishing.”

Violetta grinned. “So you left him a nice little puzzle to solve,” she observed.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “Well, after all, I'd had to solve it myself, and I wouldn't want to spoil his innocent intellectual pleasure, now would I?”

“And I suppose your authorities said 'well done, Wooster, good show, now enjoy the rest of your holiday”, did they?”

“Well... not exactly,” I said. “They wanted to know why I hadn't stolen any of his inventions while I was in his laboratory. I had to point out that it had been touch and go simply getting the stolen device back across the lake safely. Any additional weight, and my rear end would have splashed into the water.”

Violetta rolled her eyes. “I wouldn't have your job for anything,” she said. “The pay's obviously not bad, given the way you dress, but the conditions are terrible.”

“I think the pay is supposed to make up for the conditions,” I said.

“And does it?”

I shrugged. “I'm still trying to reach a conclusion on that one. Even so, the job does have its little moments. That was definitely one of them. I've always liked solving puzzles.”

“Well, I hope you did enjoy the rest of your holiday, anyway,” said Violetta.

“I'm afraid I didn't, really,” I replied.

“Why not?”

I sighed.

“They sent me on another blasted assignment.”


End file.
